t first
number than a good, swinging attack on Bevans. People read his books
and quarrel over 'em, and the critics are all against him, and a regular
flaying, with salt and vinegar rubbed in afterward, will tell more with
people who like good old-fashioned fiction than anything else. I like
Bevans's things, but, dad burn it! when it comes to that first number,
I'd offer up anybody."

"What an immoral little wretch you are, Fulkerson!" said March, with a
laugh.

Fulkerson appeared not to be very strenuous about the attack on the
novelist. "Say!" he called out, gayly, "what should you think of a paper
defending the late lamented system of slavery'?"

"What do you mean, Fulkerson?" asked March, with a puzzled smile.

Fulkerson braced his knees against his desk, and pushed himself back,
but kept his balance to the eye by canting his hat sharply forward.
"There's an old cock over there at the widow's that's written a book to
prove that slavery was and is the only solution of the labor problem.
He's a Southerner."

"I should imagine," March assented.

"He's got it on the brain that if the South could have been let alone by
the commercial spirit and the pseudophilanthropy of the North, it
would have worked out slavery into a perfectly ideal condition for the
laborer, in which he would have been insured against want, and protected
in all his personal rights by the state. He read the introduction to
me last night. I didn't catch on to all the points--his daughter's an
awfully pretty girl, and I was carrying that fact in my mind all the
time, too, you know--but that's about the gist of it."

"Seems to regard it as a lost opportunity?" said March.

"Exactly! What a mighty catchy title, Neigh? Look well on the
title-page."

"Well written?"

"I reckon so; I don't know. The Colonel read it mighty eloquently."

"It mightn't be such bad business," said March, in a muse. "Could you
get me a sight of it without committing yourself?"

"If the Colonel hasn't sent it off to another publisher this morning. He
just got it back with thanks yesterday. He likes to keep it travelling."

"Well, try it. I've a notion it might be a curious thing."

"Look here, March," said Fulkerson, with the effect of taking a fresh
hold; "I wish you could let me have one of those New York things of
yours for the first number. After all, that's going to be the great
card."

"I couldn't, Fulkerson; I couldn't, really. I want to philosophize
the m